Divergence

“Captain Rebka, I humbly suggest that both of you proceed through the cloud at once and join me here. I will prepare the Have-It-All’s lock for multiple entries and the controls for takeoff. Can you still hear me?”

“I hear you. We’re on our way, we’ll see you in a couple of minutes.” Hans Rebka was pulling at Darya’s arm again, but she needed no urging. Together they stepped into the sparkling orange glow. Darya began to count steps.

At seven paces the view around her faded. The stars overhead clouded and dissolved. She saw delicate crystals, hundreds of them, a handbreadth from her face. She heard Rebka’s voice: “Seven paces, Kallik. We’re almost a third of the way.”

Eleven steps. Small points of pressure were being applied directly to her body, within her body. Like Kallik, Darya could not say if their touch was hot or cold. She felt that the crystals were touching her i

“Fourteen paces,” said a gargling and distorted voice. That was Rebka, and he sounded as if he were underwater.

Eighteen steps. According to Kallik, she should start to see something more than the sparkling mist. Darya peered ahead of her. She could see only foggy points of light. Resistance to her progress was increasing.

It was not supposed to happen this way!

She struggled to force herself ahead, but the surface beneath her feet afforded less traction. She felt it becoming spongy, giving beneath her weight.

She wanted to sink to her knees, lean forward, and explore that insubstantial ground with her hands. But instead of releasing her, the sparkling points of light were holding her more and more tightly. She could barely move her arms and legs.

“Darya?” She heard Hans Rebka’s voice faintly in her suit phone. It was the thi

She made a final effort to push herself forward. Her limbs would not move. She was fully conscious but fixed in position, as firmly as a fly in amber.

Keep your head! she told herself. Don’t let yourself get panicky.

“Hans!” She tried to call to him, struggling to keep the fear from her voice. That concern was u

“Hans!” It was a soundless scream. Fear had taken over. “Hans!”

She listened, and she waited.

Nothing. No sound, no sight, no touch. No sensations of any kind. Not even pain.

Was this the way that life was to end, in universal darkness? Had the death that she had escaped so closely on Quake followed her to claim her here?

Darya waited. And waited.

She had a sudden vision of a personal hell that lay beyond death itself: to be held fully conscious, for eternity, unable to move, see, speak, hear, or feel.

Kallik had walked unscathed through the crystal fog. She had no reason to think that Darya Lang and Hans Rebka would fare any differently.

She heard his voice say, “Seven paces, Kallik. We’re almost a third of the way.” That was satisfactory. She listened for the next progress report, at twelve or fourteen steps.

It did not come when she expected; but before there was time to be alarmed, the barrier of sparkling mist in front of her changed, to form a series of swirling vortices that were sucked back into the hard surface. She waited, eagerly watching for the other two to appear out of the wreaths of fog.

The mist thi

She ran forward, at a speed that only those who threatened a Hymenopt with deadly violence would ever see. Two seconds and a hundred and fifty meters later she stopped. Given the snail’s pace of human movement, there was no way that Hans Rebka and Darya Lang could have traveled so far in the time available.

Kallik reared up to her full height and employed every eye in her head.

She saw Gargantua, looming on the horizon. She saw Louis Nenda’s ship, and beyond it the Summer Dreamboat, almost hidden by the tight curvature of the planetoid.

And that was all.

Kallik stood alone on the barren surface of Glister.

CHAPTER 9

The hierarchy was clear in J’merlia’s mind: humans were inferior to Cecropians, but they were well above Lo’tfians and Hymenopts, who were in turn vastly superior to Varnians, Ditrons, Bercia, and the dozens of other ragtag and marginally intelligent species of the spiral arm.

That hierarchy also defined a command chain. In the absence of Atvar H’sial or another Cecropian, J’merlia would obey the orders of a human without question. He did not have to like it, but he certainly had to do as he was told.

So J’merlia had not complained when he was ordered to remain on Dreyfus-27 while the other three went off to look for Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial on the Have-It-All. All the same, he was desperately envious of Kallik. The Hymenopt was on her way to seek her master, perhaps to help him, while J’merlia stayed here making Dreyfus-27 a more habitable habitat. Suppose that Atvar H’sial needed help? Who would provide it, if J’merlia was not there? Who could even communicate with a Cecropian, via pheromonal transfer? Not Darya Lang, or Hans Rebka, or Kallik.

The cleanup operation had been given no particular starting time, so J’merlia did not feel obliged to begin at once to improve the living quarters of Dreyfus-27. Instead he remained in his suit on the rocky surface, close to the communications unit that Hans Rebka had removed from the Dreamboat.

His experiences would have to be vicarious ones, gleaned from the verbal and occasional visual messages sent back to him. That was still better than nothing, and J’merlia possessed strong interspecies empathy. He had exulted when Kallik reported the first image of the Have-It-All on the Dreamboat’s sensors. He had waited in agony when all signals suddenly became garbled during the dive to the surface of Glister. He had rejoiced when the report came of their safe landing, and when he learned of the apparently undamaged condition of Louis Nenda’s ship. He had puzzled over the anomalous physical parameters of the planetoid itself, and the presence of a swarm of energetic Phages surrounding it. And he had nodded agreement at Darya Lang’s suggestion that Glister must itself be an artifact.

The Dreamboat’s final message for the record indicated that Darya Lang was placing the ship on remote-controlled status, while she went out onto the surface of Glister to join Hans Rebka and Kallik in their direct inspection of Louis Nenda’s starship.

J’merlia shivered with excitement and anticipation. The next communication would be the crucial one. The Have-It-All seemed undamaged, and that was wonderful. But were Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial alive or dead? J’merlia waited six hours for an answer, crouched unmoving by the com unit.

The long-awaited transmission came as a voice signal — from Kallik! “Report #11031,” she began. “09:88:3101. Unit ID R-86945.”

Louis Nenda’s ID. So the Have-It-All was certainly in working order. But even before the real message began, J’merlia knew from the slow and strained speech that something had gone terribly wrong.